How long does your snake take to eat?

[Konjira]

My partner and I own a 10mo Antaresia Maculosa, Ramón. He's usually quite a good feeder, never delays too long (when he's hungry and decides to eat, anyway) and never takes more than half an hour to eat his food.

Anyway so this time around he took 80 minutes to down a pinkie rat. We've fed him these twice before (the local pet store was out of weanling mice) and he's never taken so long! We generally document all our feeds (failed or otherwise) because I'm a stickler for data and graphs and all that stuff. We were hoping this time around to put together a short time-lapse, but it ended up being much longer than we first anticipated. Enjoy the vid!

[video=youtube;oxEBVYKcIss]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxEBVYKcIss[/video]

Also he's never eaten his food tail-first either. I have never seen him struggle so much with food before.

P.S. He's fed in his old click clack only for photographic purposes, but oddly enough he's never eaten anywhere else but in his click clack - I offer him food in his viv and he just doesn't seem to take any interest. Probably just coincidence.

 

[Rob]

My 9mo Childreni is currently on 2 hopper mice (roughly the same size as a pink rat) per feed. She'll have both of them down within 10 minutes, and I'll be upping her food size very soon.

With my others, the amount it takes them to eat is directly relevant to the size of the prey item. i.e. if the food is quite large, then they will obviously take longer to consume it. I am feeding my hatcho BHPs quite large weaner rats atm and it is taking 15-20 minutes. I have never witnessed any of my animals take anywhere near 80 minutes to consume a prey item.

 

[Boidae]

Some snakes are just slow eaters.
A few of mine, like yours, seem to play with their food for a good 1/2 hour before they start ingesting it.
Nothing to worry about really, but it can be a bit annoying if you are in a rush.

 

[Chondrobsessed]

Yesterday my jungle spent 4 hours chewing on the rats bum before figuring out the anatomy then took about half an hour. 2kg python, 250g rat

 

[jonez]

Take my darwins about 5 min then takes my 2m bredli bout 1hour cause he plays

 

[Justdragons]

my pygmy is my best feeder.. she will eat even if im holding her by her tail lol. last week i gave her a fuzzy mouse, bout an hour and half later went in to check her and she was stilll trying to eat it(backwards mind you), it was covered in slober and she was stumped.. i tryed to take it from her to swap ends and donk the head so she could smell the blood but everytime i tried she gripped tighter and sunk her teeth in.. funny stuff.

 

[leamos]

Varies alot between my snakes, some like to take there time, really savour the moment, others blink and you'll miss it. My 18mth jungle takes about 30 mins, always take her forever to find the head, but then it goes down within minutes, my yearling woma takes no more then 4 or 5 mins start to finish, he's a pig

 

[animal805]

I have recently upped my 8 month old Murray Darling to fuzzy rats and the first one was an exercise in one end to the other before he went tail first. I gave him one yesterday and after about 20 mins of "which end first" he got it on the nose and it was all over in about 5-8 mins. Boy was he excited and frantic to get it right

 

[JrFear]

one of my big MDs will strike, constrict, let go then fall asleep! ill come back like an hour later to see if shes finished but still asleep! so i shake the container abit and she starts eating!!

 

[Gruni]

My 21month old Mac has never taken 80 mins. She may play for a while before she finds the head but once she starts it is all the way down in 20mins max. She has butt munched a few times when I upsized to full grown mice but seems to have learned that lesson as it is harder (but still not 80mins worth of harder).

 

[sanna]

My stimmi which is only a couple of months younger and on fuzzy mice can down one in literally a minute or two! It's crazy haha. Guess it is just up to the snake.

 

[Tobe404]

My Jungle and MDs (even the fussy eater... When he actually wants to eat) take no more than 10 mins to down their food items.

Apart from the other day when the female MDs (8 months old) food ended up in her warer bowl which took her a good half an hour and she still couldn't work it out. So I thought bugger this and picked her up (with her Hopper Rat still in her coils) and put them in the middle of the enclosure over the heat mat. The rest is histroy as they say.

 

[ubermensch]

My Diamond can take upwards of 20 minutes just to figure out she's trying to eat it sideways...then it's anyone's guess as to whether she attempts it head first or tail first (if it's tail first, add another 10-20 minutes to her eating time)....hopeless! I would almost say she's clever sometimes with the things she does but then I watch her eat.

 

[mysnakesau]

I videoed my two young bredli's once. The boy took 5 minutes, the girl took 7 minutes while others of mine seem to be gone in no time at all.

 

[Skelhorn]

My little carpet....10 minutes....My bredli, its gone before you know it (greedy bugger)...and my Stimson's, well the male enjoys his food but the female is finished before his even 1/3 of the way through!

 

[longqi]

we watched a banded krait eat another larger snake recently
victim was some type of water snake and about 1.5 times the length of the krait
must have folded it up as it swallowed
had just the head and neck inside when we spotted it
we waited a while but it was slow so kept wandering
4 hours later on our way out of the bush the tail was just disappearing

one very interesting thing was the bite marks on the victim
bites seemed to go at regular intervals down the entire body
only reason we can figure out is that the venom is pretty important to digestion as weve seen them do the same thing with big geckos/skinks
ive seen a red belly black eat a brownie
only hit it once then down it went

 

[Grogshla]

Depending on my snake anywhere from kinda 5-30 mins

 

[Red-Ink]

Don't know... I don't watch mine eat, I might check it out one day.

 

[Gruni]

I love watching mine eat. I find it really fascinating how they manage stuff that is so big compared to their head. My wife said when we got her that she wouldn't watch anything so gross, when she happened to walk in as Skittles had her first feed she was hooked and now often watches her.